"Michael Straight, a former jockey paralyzed from the waist down, was left unable to walk for two months after the company behind his $100,000 exoskeleton refused to fix a battery issue. "
“I called [the company] thinking it was no big deal, yet I was told they stopped working on any machine that was 5 years or older,”
“Ancient” lathes, milling machines work fine. You don’t need the newest control software when the old one does the job. And good luck convincing someone to buy a $100k machine just because it is new.
Usually, you’re right. But having the actual machine is only half the problem.
Last place I was at we had this big beautiful ride along mill that was just magnificent. Between the attachments and tooling we had, it was capable of producing any part of itself down to the last nuts and bolts. With the right know how and materials, it was capable of self replication.
We torched it for scrap. Not me, as a dumb dumb welder, but the business. There was nobody we could find with any combination of a) space to put it, b) ability to pay for it, and c) know how to run it. Best we ever managed was two of the three, and since there was no money in it for the business, they elected to cut it down for scrap value. Got one of the best t-tables I’ve ever had to weld on out of the deal, but it was still a travesty.
So yes, while the machines work fine, it’s hard to find people with the skills to run them effectively, the space to actually house the machine, and the spare cash required buy and maintain it.
Well, yeah you need people to run em, maintain them and you need the space. Thing is - most people wouldn’t be looking for an older machine specifically when needing to buy something. Those machines stay in machine shops and crank out parts since forever.
Like, a neighbor of mine has three older lathes, one cnc, one larger, one smaller. He had to redo the wiring from scratch on one of them because it was so old the isolation from the wires fell off and it was just copper left hanging in the control box. No company would buy that stuff.